Suicide attempt.....[ 1940 ]

Suicide attempt at the Romanian Parliament in protest over welfare cuts

Bucharest : Romania | Dec 23, 2010

By Ranasafdaralikhan

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"We have taken away the bread to my children, " the man shouted before jumping, Agerpres agency reported, adding that this is a public television technician.

 

A 41 year old man attempted suicide today by jumping into the void from a balcony of the Romanian Parliament, in protest over welfare cuts approved by the Government.

"We have taken away the bread to my children, " the man shouted before jumping, Agerpres agency reported, adding that this is a public television technician. The man is hospitalized with multiple injuries bucarestino, although no target organ and not life threatening, medical sources said.

Without help for her autistic son

Agerpres said that the victim has an autistic son and who received social assistance had been suspended by the Government as part of its austerity policies. The Romanian Government has taken tough measures savings from his accession in 2009 to an international loan of 20,000 million euros.

The measures agreed with the International Monetary Fund in 2010 to keep the deficit below 6.8 percent including reducing public sector wages by 25 percent and the increase in VAT from 19 to 24 percent. Social benefits have also been revised downwards or, in some cases even eliminated.

The suicide attempt occurred when the prime minister, Emil Boc, was beginning his speech. All opposition MPs withdrew from the full after the incident.

NASA Image of the Day, Dec 23rd..[ 1939 ]

The latest NASA "Image of the Day" image.

Where Stars Are Born

This mosaic image is the sharpest wide-angle view ever obtained of the starburst galaxy, Messier 82 (M82). The galaxy is remarkable for its bright blue disk, webs of shredded clouds and fiery-looking plumes of glowing hydrogen blasting out of its central regions. 

 

Throughout the galaxy's center, young stars are being born 10 times faster than they are inside our entire Milky Way Galaxy, which results in a huge concentration of young stars carved into the gas and dust at the galaxy's center. The fierce galactic superwind generated from these stars compresses enough gas to make millions of more stars. In M82, young stars are crammed into tiny but massive star clusters. These, in turn, congregate by the dozens to make the bright patches, or starburst clumps, in the central parts of M82. The clusters in the clumps can only be distinguished in the sharp Hubble images. 

 

Most of the pale, white objects sprinkled around the body of M82 that look like fuzzy stars are actually individual star clusters about 20 light-years across and contain up to a million stars. The rapid rate of star formation in this galaxy eventually will be self-limiting. When star formation becomes too vigorous, it will consume or destroy the material needed to make more stars. 

 

The starburst then will subside, probably in a few tens of millions of years. The observation was made in March 2006, with Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys' Wide Field Channel. Astronomers assembled this six-image composite mosaic by combining exposures taken with four colored filters that capture starlight from visible and infrared wavelengths, as well as the light from the glowing hydrogen filaments. 

 

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA); Acknowledgment: J. Gallagher (University of Wisconsin), M. Mountain (STScI), and P. Puxley (National Science Foundation)

Πέμπτη, 23 Δεκέμβριος 2010 7:00:00 πμ

Waening for..."sacred war" [ 1938 ]

North Korea warns of "sacred war" in standoff with South

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South Korea K-9 self-propelled guns fire live rounds during air and ground military exercises on the Seungjin Fire Training Field, in mountainous Pocheon December 23, 2010.

Credit: Reuters/Park Ji-Ho/Yonhap

By Jack Kim and Sylvia Westall

SEOUL | Thu Dec 23, 2010 11:49am EST

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea threatened a nuclear "sacred war" on Thursday and South Korea vowed a "merciless counterattack" if it was attacked again as both sides raised the rhetoric on a day of more military exercises in the South.

South Korea's land and sea exercises prompted North Korea, which has threatened to reduce the South to ashes on many occasions, to denounce its richer neighbor as a warmonger.

"To counter the enemy's intentional drive to push the situation to the brink of war, our revolutionary forces are making preparations to begin a sacred war at any moment necessary based on nuclear deterrent," North Korea's KCNA news agency quoted Minister of Armed Forces Kim Yong-chun as saying.

North Korea has wielded its nuclear capability threat before but analysts say it has no way to launch a nuclear device.

Tension reached a peak last month when North Korea shelled a southern island, Yeonpyeong, killing four people, in response to a South Korean live-fire drill in what the North said were its waters.

The North has since made a conciliatory gesture, offering to re-admit U.N. nuclear inspectors worried about its nuclear weapons programme.

"We've seen North Korea flip-flop from threatening the South with nuclear war before the military exercises, then a day later ignore that the exercises took place, launch a peace initiative, and now, just days later, once again threaten with nuclear war," said Mark Hibbs of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

"The flip-flopping is part of North Korea's tactic to keep everyone guessing and off balance."

South Korean President Lee Myung-bak said on a tour of a forward army base overlooking North Korea that the South would not relax its readiness to counter any further aggression.

"We had believed patience would ensure peace on this land, but that was not the case," Lee, criticized for a perceived weak earlier response to North Korean attacks, told troops.

South Korea held a big land drill in the Pocheon region between Seoul and the heavily armed demilitarized zone (DMZ) separating the two Koreas. It also continued naval live-fire exercises 100 km (60 miles) south of the maritime border.

The drill involved a larger scale of firepower and personnel than usual for an exercise at the army training ground, a further indication that Lee wants to show the public his government can stand up to the North.

A large contingent of mechanized units operating tanks, three dozen self-propelled artillery, fighter jets and multiple rocket launchers took part in the live-fire drill just miles from the border. It lasted just less than an hour.

A British Foreign Office spokesman defended South Korea's decision to hold the exercises.

"South Korea has every right to conduct defensive military exercises in its territory," he said. "We urge North Korea to cease its aggressive rhetoric and refrain from provocative actions. North Korea must accept that engagement with the international community is better than isolation."

NASA Image of the Day, Dec 22nd...[ 1937 ]

The latest NASA "Image of the Day" image.

Reflections

In this image from Friday, Dec. 17, space shuttle Discovery sat on Launch Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, as its external fuel tank was filled with more than 535,000 gallons of super-cold liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen during a tanking test. Data from the ship's 89 sensors were evaluated after the tank returned to ambient temperature. 

 

This morning,Discovery arrived at the Vehicle Assembly Building, completing the 3.4 mile trek from Launch Pad 39A, known as a rollback, that began at 10:48 p.m. EST on Tuesday, Dec. 21, 2010. 

 

There, technicians will take x-ray scans beneath the foam insulation of all 108 support beams, called stringers, on Discovery’s external fuel tank. They’ll also remove sensors on the external tank from last Friday’s tanking test and reapply foam to those areas.

 

Image Credit: NASA/Frank Michaux

Τετάρτη, 22 Δεκέμβριος 2010 7:00:00 πμ

South Korea-USA military exercises,,[ 1936 ]

New South Korea exercises to test border tension

 

North Korean soldiers hold exercises amid large-scale South Korean drills

 

BBC.,22 December 2010 Last updated at 04:52 GMT

South Korea has said it will hold new large-scale military drills involving ground and air live fire on Thursday.

Artillery, jets and about 800 soldiers will take part, the government said, alongside separate naval exercises that began on Wednesday.

Tension has been high since North Korea shelled the South's Yeonpyeong island last month, killing four South Koreans.

Drills by the South on Monday near Yeonpyeong sparked Northern threats of retaliation that did not materialise.

Huge scale

An army spokesman said Thursday's drill would be held at Pocheon, 20km (12 miles) south of the border - about 50km from central Seoul.

Exercises have been held at Pocheon before, but this would be on an unprecedented scale, the spokesman said.

"The scale of mechanised assets taking place is enormous. When we would normally have 6 K-9 mechanised artillery, we'll have 36.

"We'll have the F-15 jets firing. We'll have choppers. You can say most of the mechanised assets taking part will be firing live ammunition," the spokesman said.

"We will retaliate thoroughly if the North commits another provocative act like the shelling of Yeonpyeong," First Armoured Battalion commander Choo Eun-sik told Yonhap news agency.

"Through this exercise [at Pocheon], we will demonstrate our solid military preparedness," he said.

The BBC's Kevin Kim in Seoul says this is the largest winter live-fire exercise ever conducted on land here.

Separately, a "routine" four-day naval firing exercise has begun off the east coast of South Korea, involving six warships and helicopters.

The North Korean shelling of Yeonpyeong shocked South Koreans.

It sparked the replacement of the country's defence minister and the development of a more active defence and deterrence policy among South Korean planners.

South Korea and the US - with which it has a long military relationship - had already been conducting large-scale military exercises, following the apparent torpedoing of a South Korean warship by the North on 26 March, which killed 46 south Korean sailors.

The pace of military drills has been stepped up in recent weeks, despite frequent denunciations from North Korea and its closest ally China.

Richardson visit

Efforts to redirect the Korean issue back to the negotiating table have been unsuccessful.

 

South Korea now patrols Yeonpyeong Island since it was shelled by the North in November

China and the North say it is time to return to the six-nation talks about North Korea's nuclear programmes.

But the US, South Korea and Japan have said they will not return to such talks, which have previously involved rewards for the North if it cuts back on nuclear development.

After a visit to North Korea, the US politician, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, said North Korea agreed to let international monitors back into the country to inspect its nuclear sites.

China has also urged the North to invite staff from the International Atomic Energy Agency but there has been no word from the North on the subject.

"The six-party talks will be restarted again when the North Koreans display a willingness to change their behaviour," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.

North Korea walked out of the six-party talks in April 2009 and expelled UN nuclear inspectors from the country.